Demonstrating Relationships between the Morphology of the Trigeminal System and Feeding Performance in the American Alligator: A New Tool for Understanding Feeding Evolution
By Kavita Jain
Evolutionary Biology is an extremely diverse field, in which studies of evolution occur both on the anatomical and molecular level. The anatomical level of this incredible field includes research like mine, used to reveal more about Earth’s past and creation, and to detail organism relationships using phylogenetic trees. This type of work reveals so much about the past that it is astounding … Archosaurs are an incredibly diverse and evolutionary highly successful group of organisms that include birds, crocodilians, and the now-extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs (Brusatte, 2010). Their success as predators is particularly noteworthy. Not only were the long-extinct non-avian theropod dinosaurs the largest and most abundant terrestrial predators of the Mesozoic, but also during and since that period crocodilians have not only persisted but also dominated predatory aquatic and shore-line niches for more than 85 million years (Erickson et al., 2012). Like in many successful groups, feeding performance is a key reason for the evolutionary fitness of these animals (Erickson et al., 2003, 2012; Gignac, 2010).